New Books in Science
745 episodes - English - Latest episode: 12 days ago - ★★★★ - 13 ratingsInterviews with Scientists about their New Books
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Episodes
Bobby Cherayil, "The Logic of Immunity: Deciphering an Enigma" (Johns Hopkins UP, 2024)
April 16, 2024 08:00 - 1 hourMost of us appreciate the importance of the immune system yet have very little knowledge about how it actually works. If you fall into this camp and are curious to learn more about this intricate system, Bobby Cherayil's book is an excellent resource. The Logic of Immunity: Deciphering an Enigma was published in January 2024 by John Hopkins University Press. It gives a great overview of this complex system, including several findings from the recent years. It also points out the many areas of...
Rasmus Winther, "Our Genes: A Philosophical Perspective on Human Evolutionary Genomics" (Cambridge UP, 2023)
April 14, 2024 08:00 - 1 hourSituated at the intersection of natural science and philosophy, Our Genes: A Philosophical Perspective on Human Evolutionary Genomics (Cambridge University Press, 2023) explores historical practices, investigates current trends, and imagines future work in genetic research to answer persistent, political questions about human diversity. Readers are guided through fascinating thought experiments, complex measures and metrics, fundamental evolutionary patterns, and in-depth treatment of excitin...
Guru Madhavan on Wicked Problems and Engineering a Better World
April 02, 2024 08:00 - 1 hourPeoples & Things host, Lee Vinsel, talks with Guru Madhavan, Norman R. Augustine Senior Scholar and Senior Director of Programs at the National Academy of Engineering, about his recent book, Wicked Problems: How to Engineer a Better World (W. W. Norton & Company, 2024). In Wicked Problems, Madhavan draws on a rich body of literature from the humanities and social sciences to think through how engineers can do a better job working on problems that include complex social and technical realities...
Max Bennett, "A Brief History of Intelligence: Evolution, Ai, and the Five Breakthroughs That Made Our Brains" (Mariner Books, 2023)
April 01, 2024 08:00 - 1 hourA Brief History of Intelligence: Evolution, Ai, and the Five Breakthroughs That Made Our Brains (Mariner Books, 2023) tells two fascinating stories. One is the evolution of nervous systems. It started 600 million years ago, when the first brains evolved in tiny worms. The other one is humans' quest to create more and more intelligent systems. This story begins in 1951 with the first reinforcement learning algorithm trying to mimic neural networks. Max Bennett is an AI entrepreneur and neurosc...
Claudia de Rham, "The Beauty of Falling: A Life in Pursuit of Gravity" (Princeton UP, 2024)
April 01, 2024 08:00 - 50 minutesClaudia de Rham has been playing with gravity her entire life. As a diver, experimenting with her body's buoyancy in the Indian Ocean. As a pilot, soaring over Canadian waterfalls on dark mornings before beginning her daily scientific research. As an astronaut candidate, dreaming of the experience of flying free from Earth's pull. And as a physicist, discovering new sides to gravity's irresistible personality by exploring the limits of Einstein's general theory of relativity. In The Beauty o...
Emma Frances Bloomfield, "Science V. Story: Narrative Strategies for Science Communicators" (U California Press, 2024)
March 30, 2024 04:00 - 35 minutesListen to this interview of Emma Frances Bloomfield, Associate Professor of Communication Studies at the University of Nevada, Las Vegas. We talk about her novel analytical tool for helping you narrativize research! Bloomfield's new book is Science V. Story: Narrative Strategies for Science Communicators (U California Press, 2024) Emma Bloomfield : "I'd love to see more direct incorporation of communication studies and communication skills into the science curriculum but also into a researche...
Brandon R. Brown, "Sharing Our Science: How to Write and Speak STEM" (MIT Press, 2023)
March 18, 2024 08:00 - 54 minutesListen to this interview of Brandon Brown, Professor of Physics at the University of San Francisco. We talk about factoring in both message-sender and -receiver to your writing for STEM. Brown is the author of Sharing Our Science: How to Write and Speak STEM (MIT Press, 2023). Brandon Brown : "I've seen so many different scientists and communicators, including Nobel Laureates, all the way to grad students who are struggling with the English — and it's just apparent to me that some people do h...
Lorraine Daston, "Rivals: How Scientists Learned to Cooperate" (Columbia Global Reports, 2023)
March 10, 2024 08:00 - 48 minutesIn Rivals: How Scientists Learned to Cooperate (Columbia Global Reports, 2023), Lorraine Daston, Director Emerita of the Max Planck Institute for the History of Science in Berlin, delves into the 350-year history of one of the most elusive communities of all: the “scientific community.” For the apparent simplicity and relative ubiquity of the expression hides in fact a complex and constantly evolving reality. As Daston puts it to open her book, “The scientific community is by any measure a ve...
Kenneth Miller, "Mapping the Darkness: The Visionary Scientists Who Unlocked the Mysteries of Sleep" (Hachette Books, 2023)
March 08, 2024 09:00 - 39 minutesWhy do we sleep? How can we improve our sleep? A century ago, sleep was considered a state of nothingness—even a primitive habit that we could learn to overcome. Then, an immigrant scientist and his assistant spent a month in the depths of a Kentucky cave, making nationwide headlines and thrusting sleep science to the forefront of our consciousness. In the 1920s, Nathaniel Kleitman founded the world’s first dedicated sleep lab at the University of Chicago, where he subjected research particip...
Thomas Metzinger, "The Elephant and the Blind: The Experience of Pure Consciousness: Philosophy, Science, and 500+ Experiential Reports" (MIT Press, 2024)
March 06, 2024 09:00 - 51 minutesWhat if our goal had not been to land on Mars, but in pure consciousness? The experience of pure consciousness—what does it look like? What is the essence of human consciousness? In The Elephant and the Blind. The Experience of Pure Consciousness: Philosophy, Science, and 500+ Experiential Reports (MIT Press, 2024)," influential philosopher Thomas Metzinger, one of the world's leading researchers on consciousness, brings together more than 500 experiential reports to offer the world's first c...
Sten Grillner, "The Brain in Motion: From Microcircuits to Global Brain Function" (MIT Press, 2023)
February 23, 2024 09:00 - 1 hourC. S. Sherrington said “All the brain can do is to move things". The Brain in Motion: From Microcircuits to Global Brain Function (MIT Press, 2023) shows how much the brain can do "just" by moving things. It gives an amazing overview of the large variety of motor behaviors and the cellular basis of them. It reveals how motor circuits provide the underlying mechanism not just for walking or jumping, but also for breath or chewing. The book emphasizes the evolutionary perspective. It demonstrat...
Christopher Reddy, "Science Communication in a Crisis: An Insider's Guide" (Routledge, 2023)
February 13, 2024 09:00 - 55 minutesListen to this interview of Christopher Reddy, environmental chemist and Senior Scientist at the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution in Massachusetts. We talk about his book Science Communication in a Crisis: An Insider's Guide (Routledge Earthscan 2023). Christopher Reddy : "Communication definitely teaches us scientists things that we hadn't knows or appreciated, even in our own research. I mean, when you have to rethink about how and why you're doing something and what the outcomes mean, ...
Michael Devitt, "Biological Essentialism" (Oxford UP, 2023)
February 10, 2024 09:00 - 1 hourWhat makes a species a species? Aristotle answered the species question by positing unchanging essences, properties that all and only members of a species shared. Individuals belonged to a species by possessing this essence. Biologists and philosophers of biology today are either not essentialists at all, or if they are think there are essences they are relational, historical properties. In his provocative book Biological Essentialism (Oxford UP, 2023), Michael Devitt argues for a new form o...
How the Hypothesis Means
February 04, 2024 09:00 - 58 minutesListen to Episode No.6 of All We Mean, a Special Focus of this podcast. All We Mean is an ongoing discussion and debate about how we mean and why. The guests on today's episode are Bill Cope and Mary Kalantzis, professors at the University of Illinois, and today as well, Bradley Alger, Professor Emeritus, Department of Physiology, University of Maryland School of Medicine. In this episode of the Focus, our topic is How the hypothesis means. What does out knowledge mean after it’s been hypothe...
Use of Bacteriophages as Natural Antimicrobials to Manage Bacterial Pathogens in Aquaculture in Vietnam and Australia
February 02, 2024 09:00 - 24 minutesAquaculture is the fastest-growing protein production industry globally, with Vietnam one of the top producers and exporters of seafood products. In Vietnam, aquaculture is seen as a means of protecting rural livelihoods threatened by the consequences of climate change on agriculture. But climate change also drives the emergence of marine bacterial pathogens, causing considerable losses to aquaculture production. Traditionally, pathogen blooms have been treated with antimicrobials – but this ...
Science Is a Creative Human Enterprise: A Discussion with Natalie Aviles
January 31, 2024 09:00 - 1 hourListen to this interview of Natalie Aviles, Assistant Professor of Sociology, University of Virginia. We talk about how organizations shape people, and how people shape science. Natalie Aviles : "I think, in general, the more self-conscious that scientists can be about what motivates them, about what makes them happy, about what drives them — the more, then, they can try to imagine a future that satisfies not only their intellectual curiosity but helps them navigate, too, the very sort of pro...
Ludovic Slimak, "The Naked Neanderthal: A New Understanding of the Human Creature" (Pegasus Books, 2023)
January 26, 2024 09:00 - 40 minutesWhat do we really know about our cousins, the Neanderthals? For over a century we saw Neanderthals as inferior to Homo Sapiens. More recently, the pendulum swung the other way and they are generally seen as our relatives: not quite human, but similar enough, and still not equal. Now, thanks to an ongoing revolution in paleoanthropology in which he has played a key part, Ludovic Slimak shows us that they are something altogether different -- and they should be understood on their own terms rat...
Harry van der Hulst, "A Mind for Language: An Introduction to the Innateness Debate" (Cambridge UP, 2023)
January 20, 2024 09:00 - 57 minutesHow does human language arise in the mind? To what extent is it innate, or something that is learned? How do these factors interact? The questions surrounding how we acquire language are some of the most fundamental about what it means to be human and have long been at the heart of linguistic theory. Harry van der Hulst's book A Mind for Language: An Introduction to the Innateness Debate (Cambridge UP, 2023) provides a comprehensive introduction to this fascinating debate, unravelling the ar...
The Future of Images of Human Evolution
January 20, 2024 09:00 - 35 minutesWe are all familiar with the “march of progress” image - the representation of evolution that depicts a series of apelike creatures becoming progressively taller and more erect before finally reaching the upright human form. It’s a powerful image. In his book Monkey to Man: The Evolution of the March of Progress Image (Yale UP, 2024), Professor Gowan Dawson examines its origins and its influence on the public understanding of evolution. Listen to him in conversation with Owen Bennett Jones. O...
Free to Investigate: Dr. Scott Atlas on the Freedom in the Sciences
January 16, 2024 09:00 - 1 hourCan we have science without freedom of speech? Dr. Scott Atlas's professional work and personal experiences bring to light an important and often under-discussed element of speech: freedom of speech in the hard sciences. The COVID-19 pandemic ushered in a host of new questions and concerns surrounding our medical system and government health agencies: as Special Advisor to the President and a member of the White House Coronavirus Task Force from July to December 2020, Dr. Atlas was at the for...
Thom van Dooren, "The Wake of Crows: Living and Dying in Shared Worlds" (Columbia UP, 2019)
January 06, 2024 09:00 - 1 hourCrows can be found almost everywhere that people are, from tropical islands to deserts and arctic forests, from densely populated cities to suburbs and farms. Across these diverse landscapes, many species of crow are doing well: their intelligent and adaptive ways of life have allowed them to thrive amid human-driven transformations. Indeed, crows are frequently disliked for their success, seen as pests, threats, and scavengers on the detritus of human life. But among the vast variety of crow...
Lee McIntyre, "The Scientific Attitude: Defending Science from Denial, Fraud, and Pseudoscience" (MIT Press, 2019)
January 02, 2024 09:00 - 30 minutesWhat can explain the success of science as an endeavor for getting closer to truth? Does science simply represent a successful methodology, or is it something more? In The Scientific Attitude: Defending Science from Denial, Fraud, and Pseudoscience (MIT Press, 2019), Lee McIntyre addresses recent attacks on science in areas such as climate change, vaccination, and even belief that the world is flat by explaining why science is a culture built around a “scientific attitude” that embraces evide...
Jonathan B. Losos, "The Cat's Meow: How Cats Evolved from the Savanna to Your Sofa" (Viking, 2023)
December 20, 2023 05:00 - 39 minutesThe domestic cat--your cat--has, from its evolutionary origins in Africa, been transformed in comparatively little time into one of the most successful and diverse species on the planet. Jonathan Losos, writing as both a scientist and a cat lover, explores how researchers today are unraveling the secrets of the cat, past and present, using all the tools of modern technology, from GPS tracking (you'd be amazed where those backyard cats roam) and genomics (what is your so-called Siamese cat . ....
Lawrence Sherman and Dennis Plies, "Every Brain Needs Music: The Neuroscience of Making and Listening to Music" (Columbia UP, 2023)
December 16, 2023 09:00 - 43 minutesWhenever a person engages with music--when a piano student practices a scale, a jazz saxophonist riffs on a melody, a teenager sobs to a sad song, or a wedding guest gets down on the dance floor--countless neurons are firing. Playing an instrument requires all of the resources of the nervous system, including cognitive, sensory, and motor functions. Composition and improvisation are remarkable demonstrations of the brain's capacity for creativity. Something as seemingly simple as listening to...
Toward Equity in Science: A Discussion with Cassidy Sugimoto and Vincent Larivière
December 16, 2023 09:00 - 37 minutesListen to this interview of Cassidy Sugimoto and Vincent Larivière, co-authors of Equity for Women in Science: Dismantling Systemic Barriers to Advancement (Harvard UP, 2023). Cassidy is Professor and Tom and Marie Patton School Chair in the School of Public Policy at the Georgia Institute of Technology. She is also President of the International Society for Scientometrics and Informetrics. Vincent is Professor of Information Science at Université de Montréal, where he also serves as Associat...
Philip Goff, "Why? The Purpose of the Universe" (Oxford UP, 2023)
December 10, 2023 09:00 - 1 hourDoes the universe have a purpose? If it does, how is this connected to the meaningfulness that we seek in our lives? In Why? The Purpose of the Universe (Oxford University Press, 2023), Philip Goff argues for cosmic purposivism, the idea that the universe does have a purpose – although this is not because there is an all-powerful God who provides it with one. Instead, Goff argues, fundamental physics provides us with reason to think it is probable there is a cosmic purpose – and, moreover, th...
Services and Training for Publishing Scientists: The Current Direction of Travel
December 03, 2023 05:00 - 51 minutesListen to this interview of John Bond, founder and publishing consultant of Riverwinds Consulting. We talk about the breadth of services and resources now on offer to publishing scientists — while the industry only grows broader and broader. John Bond : "The one thing I would say helps specifically the middle-tier author (who'll, by the way, be most reluctant to try this) is this: Feel really comfortable sharing your early work on a more frequent and a wider basis. Because these authors tend ...
Coleen T. Murphy, "How We Age: The Science of Longevity" (Princeton UP, 2023)
December 01, 2023 09:00 - 31 minutesAll of us would like to live longer, or to slow the debilitating effects of age. In How We Age: The Science of Longevity (Princeton UP, 2023), Coleen Murphy shows how recent research on longevity and aging may be bringing us closer to this goal. Murphy, a leading scholar of aging, explains that the study of model systems, particularly simple invertebrate animals, combined with breakthroughs in genomic methods, have allowed scientists to probe the molecular mechanisms of longevity and aging. U...
The Future of Innovation: A Discussion with Min W. Jung
November 26, 2023 09:00 - 35 minutesHumans have been so dominant on Earth in large part because of their capacity to innovate – but how does that work exactly? Why can they innovate so much? That issue has been studied by Professor Min W. Jung from the Center for Synaptic Brain Dysfunctions at the Institute for Basic Science in South Korea. He is the author of A Brain for Innovation: The Neuroscience of Imagination and Abstract Thinking (Columbia UP, 2023). Listen to him in conversation with Owen Bennett Jones. Owen Bennett-Jon...
Darwinian Accident or Divine Architect? (with Jay Richards)
November 23, 2023 09:00 - 1 hourJay Richards PhD, OP discusses the new book to which he contributed a chapter, God’s Grandeur: The Catholic Case for Intelligent Design (Sophia Institute Press, 2023), edited by Ann Gauger. We take on the insufficient explanations of Darwinian orthodoxy which insists that our world—from the vast cosmos to the also vast (in its complexity) genetic code in our cells. At the end of this episode (at 55 minutes), we hear an update from Father Piotr Żelazko in Israel as we enter the second month of...
Maura C. Flannery, "In the Herbarium: The Hidden World of Collecting and Preserving Plants" (Yale UP, 2023)
November 14, 2023 09:00 - 48 minutesIn In the Herbarium: The Hidden World of Collecting and Preserving Plants (Yale University Press, 2023), Maura C. Flannery elucidates how herbaria illuminate the past and future of plant science. Collections of preserved plant specimens, known as herbaria, have existed for nearly five centuries. These pressed and labeled plants have been essential resources for scientists, allowing them to describe and differentiate species and to document and research plant changes and biodiversity over time...
Gary Tomlinson, "The Machines of Evolution and the Scope of Meaning" (Zone Books, 2023)
November 13, 2023 09:00 - 1 hourWhat is meaning? How does it arise? Where is it found in the world? In recent years, philosophers and scientists have answered these questions in different ways. Some see meaning as a uniquely human achievement, others extend it to trees, microbes, and even to the bonding of DNA and RNA molecules. In this groundbreaking book, Gary Tomlinson defines a middle path. Combining emergent thinking about evolution, new research on animal behaviors, and theories of information and signs, he tracks mea...
How to Read Scientific Papers: A Discussion with David Evans
November 07, 2023 09:00 - 54 minutesListen to this interview of David Evans, Professor of Computer Science, University of Virginia. We talk about what makes scientific reading different. David Evans : "Most scientific papers are making some claim. So, the real goal as a reader is to understand, Do I believe them? Have the authors done what's necessary to make that claim and make it convincing? But there's another goal, too, and that is to understand, What can I learn from this paper technically — have the authors done something...
Jeremy Howick, "The Power of Placebos: Unlocking Their Potential to Improve Health Care" (Johns Hopkins UP, 2023)
November 05, 2023 09:00 - 34 minutesShould your doctor prescribe a placebo for you, instead of conventional medicine? And if she did, would it work? Is the double-blind placebo-controlled paradigm really the gold standard for medical research? Placebos are the most widely used treatments in the history of medicine. Thousands of studies show that they can be effective and make us happier and healthier. Yet confusion about what placebos are and how to measure their effects prevents some doctors from using them to help patients. M...
Shark Sciences: A Conversation with Carlee Jackson
October 26, 2023 08:00 - 52 minutesToday’s book is Minorities in Shark Sciences: Diverse Voices in Shark Research (CRC Press, 2022), edited by Jasmin Graham, Camila Caceres and Deborah Santos de Azevedo Menna, which showcases the work done by Black, Indigenous and People of Color around the world in the fields of shark science and conservation. It highlights important research by people who were historically excluded from STEM, and the unique perspectives these scientists bring to their field. The contributors to this book hop...
The Future of Paying Attention: A Discussion with Carolyn Dicey Jennings
October 24, 2023 08:00 - 42 minutesIs it really harder to pay attention to something than it used to be? No doubt the world is getting faster, and social media platforms are so good at grabbing attention. But how real is the problem and in particular, does it impact our creativity? Carolyn Dicey Jennings is based at the University of California, Merced, and has just co-written a chapter called “Attention, Technology, and Creativity” in a book called Scenes of Attention: Essays on Mind, Time, and the Senses published by Columbi...
Trenton W. Holliday, "Cro-Magnon: The Story of the Last Ice Age People of Europe" (Columbia UP, 2023)
October 23, 2023 08:00 - 42 minutesDuring the Last Ice Age, Europe was a cold, dry place teeming with mammoths, woolly rhinoceroses, reindeer, bison, cave bears, cave hyenas, and cave lions. It was also the home of people physically indistinguishable from humans today, commonly known as the Cro-Magnons. Our knowledge of them comes from either their skeletons or the tools, art, and debris they left behind. Cro-Magnon: The Story of the Last Ice Age People of Europe (Columbia UP, 2023) tells the story of these dynamic and resilie...
Joshua May, "Neuroethics: Agency in the Age of Brain Science" (Oxford UP, 2023)
October 07, 2023 08:00 - 57 minutesIs free will an illusion? Is addiction a brain disease? Should we enhance our brains beyond normal? Neuroethics: Agency in the Age of Brain Science (Oxford UP, 2023) blends philosophical analysis with modern brain science to address these and other critical questions through captivating cases. The result is a nuanced view of human agency as surprisingly diverse and flexible. With a lively and accessible writing style, Neuroethics is an indispensable resource for students and scholars in both ...
Kevin J. Mitchell, "Free Agents: How Evolution Gave Us Free Will" (Princeton UP, 2023)
October 01, 2023 08:00 - 32 minutesScientists are learning more and more about how brain activity controls behavior and how neural circuits weigh alternatives and initiate actions. As we probe ever deeper into the mechanics of decision making, many conclude that agency--or free will--is an illusion. In Free Agents: How Evolution Gave Us Free Will (Princeton UP, 2023), leading neuroscientist Kevin Mitchell presents a wealth of evidence to the contrary, arguing that we are not mere machines responding to physical forces but agen...
Michael D. Gordin, "Pseudoscience: A Very Short Introduction" (Oxford UP, 2023)
September 27, 2023 08:00 - 1 hourEveryone has heard of the term "pseudoscience," typically used to describe something that looks like science, but is somehow false, misleading, or unproven. Many would be able to agree on a list of things that fall under its umbrella - astrology, phrenology, UFOlogy, creationism, and eugenics might come to mind. But defining what makes these fields “pseudo” is a far more complex issue. It has proved impossible to come up with a simple criterion that enables us to differentiate pseudoscience f...
A Better Way to Buy Books
September 12, 2023 08:00 - 34 minutesBookshop.org is an online book retailer that donates more than 80% of its profits to independent bookstores. Launched in 2020, Bookshop.org has already raised more than $27,000,000. In this interview, Andy Hunter, founder and CEO discusses his journey to creating one of the most revolutionary new organizations in the book world. Bookshop has found a way to retain the convenience of online book shopping while also supporting independent bookstores that are the backbones of many local communiti...
Herlinde Koelbl, "Fascination of Science: 60 Encounters with Pioneering Researchers of Our Time" (MIT Press, 2023)
September 06, 2023 04:00 - 28 minutesAn intimate collection of portraits of internationally renowned scientists and Nobel Prize winners, paired with interviews and personal stories. What makes a brilliant scientist? Who are the people behind the greatest discoveries of our time? Connecting art and science, photographer Herlinde Koelbl seeks the answers in this English translation of the German book Fascination of Science: 60 Encounters with Pioneering Researchers of Our Time (MIT Press, 2023), an indelible collection of portrait...
Gary Smith, "Distrust: Big Data, Data-Torturing, and the Assault on Science" (Oxford UP, 2023)
August 27, 2023 08:00 - 36 minutesThere is no doubt science is currently suffering from a credibility crisis. Gary Smith's book Distrust: Big Data, Data-Torturing, and the Assault on Science (Oxford UP, 2023) argues that, ironically, science's credibility is being undermined by tools created by scientists themselves. Scientific disinformation and damaging conspiracy theories are rife because of the internet that science created, the scientific demand for empirical evidence and statistical significance leads to data torturing ...
The Future of Talking: A Discussion with Shane O'Mara
August 26, 2023 08:00 - 41 minutesTalking is a defining part of what makes us human – we are almost constantly in dialogue but what purpose does all this conversation serve? Both for the individual and for society. And what is happening in our brains when we do it? Shane O Mara has been thinking about those questions for his book, Talking Heads: the New Science of How Conversation Shapes our Worlds (Jonathan Cape, 2023). Listen to him in conversation with Owen Bennett Jones. Owen Bennett-Jones is a freelance journalist and w...
Steve Nicholls, "Alien Worlds: How Insects Conquered the Earth, and Why Their Fate Will Determine Our Future" (Princeton UP, 2023)
August 15, 2023 08:00 - 33 minutesLife on Earth depends on the busy activities of insects, but global populations of these teeming creatures are currently under threat, with grave consequences for us all. Steve Nicholls' book Alien Worlds: How Insects Conquered the Earth, and Why Their Fate Will Determine Our Future (Princeton UP, 2023) presents insects and other arthropods as you have never seen them before, explaining how they conquered the planet and why there are so many of them, and shedding light on the evolutionary mar...
Working on Mars: Voyages of Scientific Discovery with the Mars Exploration Rovers
August 14, 2023 15:20 - 19 minutesGeologists in the field climb hills and hang onto craggy outcrops; they put their fingers in sand and scratch, smell, and even taste rocks. Beginning in 2004, however, a team of geologists and other planetary scientists did field science in a dark room in Pasadena, exploring Mars from NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) by means of the remotely operated Mars Exploration Rovers (MER). Clustered around monitors, living on Mars time, painstakingly plotting each movement of the rovers and thei...
The Outer Limits of Reason: What Science, Mathematics, and Logic Cannot Tell Us
July 31, 2023 21:44 - 16 minutesMany books explain what is known about the universe. This book investigates what cannot be known. Rather than exploring the amazing facts that science, mathematics, and reason have revealed to us, this work studies what science, mathematics, and reason tell us cannot be revealed. In The Outer Limits of Reason, Noson Yanofsky considers what cannot be predicted, described, or known, and what will never be understood. He discusses the limitations of computers, physics, logic, and our own thought...
The Science of Science: A Discussion with Aaron Clauset
July 26, 2023 08:00 - 1 hourListen to this interview of Aaron Clauset, Professor of Computer Science at the University of Colorado at Boulder and in the BioFrontiers Institute. Aaron is also External Faculty at the Santa Fe Institute. We talk about what the science of science can contribute to your career in research. Aaron Clauset : "In science, having good ideas is, in the end, the most important part. You can go a long way, in terms of surviving in the ecosystem of scientific research, on the basis of having really g...
The Role of Luck in Science: A Discussion with Nicolas Christin
July 23, 2023 08:00 - 1 hourListen to this interview of Nicolas Christin, Professor at Carnegie Mellon University, jointly appointed in the School of Computer Science and in the department of Engineering and Public Policy. We talk about the luck it takes to succeed in research, and of course too about the initiative shown by successful researchers to seize that luck. Nicolas Christin : "You will get a pretty good understanding of where some research idea has come from if you read the Introduction of the paper very caref...
Janna Levin, "How the Universe Got Its Spots: Diary of a Finite Time in a Finite Space" (Princeton UP, 2023)
July 15, 2023 08:00 - 28 minutesIs the universe infinite or just really big? With this question, cosmologist Janna Levin announces the central theme of this book, which established her as one of the most direct, unorthodox, and creative voices in contemporary science. As Levin sets out to determine how big "really big" may be, she offers a rare intimate look at the daily life of an innovative physicist, complete with jet lag and the tensions between personal relationships and the extreme demands of scientific exploration. N...